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Zero carbon emissions? The uranium drag line, trucks, ships, trains, and smelters are all fossil fuel powered, and that doesn't include the prodigious amounts

Zero carbon emissions? The uranium drag line, trucks, ships, trains, and smelters are all fossil fuel powered, and that doesn't include the prodigious amounts of steel and cement needed for a nuclear plant. It might be less carbon-intensive than, say, oil, but it's certainly nowhere near zero. LFTR reactors, if they actually had significant economic potential, wouldn't need incentives. India or China would have gone all-out on them, but the fact is they still require Uranium to get started, and even in theory they aren't much better than what we're currently using for fission-based power. Ignoring both coal and nuclear is pretty much inevitable, as long as natural gas and renewables stay this cheap or cheaper.

cornholio 8y ago
> The uranium drag line, trucks, ships, trains, and smelters are all fossil fuel powered, and that doesn't include the prodigious amounts of steel and cement needed for a nuclear plant. There is considerably less ore mining and refining involved in nuclear compared to renewable, due to the orders of magnitude higher energy density. It's fallacious reasoning, because by that standard, NOTHING produced by the current society is zero carbon. Nuclear itself is zero carbon, just like wind or solar. But all three require material that could conceivably be produced in a zero carbon / 100% offset regimen. So the correct approach is to push for zero carbon transport, zero carbon cement etc. Or just tax the carbon to get it to a planetary safe level and let the market allocate.
greedo 8y ago
Natural gas needs to be phased out due to CO2.
- st26 8y ago
  Eventually, but for now it's a 50% reduction over coal.
- greglindahl 8y ago
  Eventually, yes. One nice thing about the US natural gas boom is that power plants for natural gas have much lower capital costs than coal plants, so there will be less screaming when they are eventually shut down.
- grizzles 8y ago
  There are several ways now to burn natural gas without releasing even a single ounce of CO2 into the atmosphere. For example, one way cracks natural gas into hydrogen and into solid black carbon which is a fine powder, and easy to store away. Natural gas will be an integral of the energy mix for the next 50 years at least.

cornholio 8y ago

> The uranium drag line, trucks, ships, trains, and smelters are all fossil fuel powered, and that doesn't include the prodigious amounts of steel and cement needed for a nuclear plant. There is considerably less ore mining and refining involved in nuclear compared to renewable, due to the orders of magnitude higher energy density. It's fallacious reasoning, because by that standard, NOTHING produced by the current society is zero carbon. Nuclear itself is zero carbon, just like wind or solar. But all three require material that could conceivably be produced in a zero carbon / 100% offset regimen. So the correct approach is to push for zero carbon transport, zero carbon cement etc. Or just tax the carbon to get it to a planetary safe level and let the market allocate.

greedo 8y ago

Natural gas needs to be phased out due to CO2.

st26 8y ago
Eventually, but for now it's a 50% reduction over coal.
greglindahl 8y ago
Eventually, yes. One nice thing about the US natural gas boom is that power plants for natural gas have much lower capital costs than coal plants, so there will be less screaming when they are eventually shut down.
grizzles 8y ago
There are several ways now to burn natural gas without releasing even a single ounce of CO2 into the atmosphere. For example, one way cracks natural gas into hydrogen and into solid black carbon which is a fine powder, and easy to store away. Natural gas will be an integral of the energy mix for the next 50 years at least.